Remembering the Centaur

Several small buildings stood between rows of tents, flimsy shelter where most of the patients were kept.

For 10-year-old Bryan Costigan, heading there, to the Greenslopes Military Hospital, was a Sunday institution.

While World War II was being waged it was the only day of the week he got to see his father, Joe Costigan, a ward officer.

In May 1943, however, young Bryan, at his father’s urging, met some special patients, people who would “go down in history”, his father said. They were the Centaur survivors, taken to the hospital after the ship was sunk by the Japanese about 4am on May 14, 1943.

“As a young bloke I didn’t really understand the significance of it all, but I got a sense my father thought it was very important I went and saw those people,” said Bryan, now aged 76, who lives at Caloundra.

To film the Centaur, he sent down a submarine robot called Remora 3 to identify three distinguishable features – the ship’s bright redcross, a distinctive star on the bow and a corroded identification No.47.

A memorial to the people who went down with the Centaur stands on a Caloundra headland.